Maggie on Photographic References, Part III

portrait commission/ work in progress
16 x 20" colored pencil on pastelbord
copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.

I am interrupting a fun filled evening of child-rearing and art-making to continue my series on altering photographic references for art. (Last part can be found here)

Anyway, so I just rolled over an Oreo with my desk chair (remind me to tell you guys tomorrow about buying a new desk chair) and I'm amazed at how large a splatter pattern one Oreo can make when faced with light-colored carpet. Really, the government should study this. I'm sure it has some use in the defense area.

All right, last post I covered lighting and composition in photo references. Tonight I'm going to write about how I approach photographs that are lacking good color or nice backgrounds, two things that are particularly important in simple portraits.

CORRECTING FOR POOR COLOR IN PHOTOGRAPHS

This one is sort of easy. It takes a bit of leg work, but it's not really hard. I get photos with poor color all the time -- flashed photos often are washed out, dark photos can be brightened for details but often lack good color, weird lighting situations can create technicolor creations of terrifying hue.

In this case, it's a matter of finding another photo, or photos, that fill in the information gap. Sometimes, this will be very easy. For instance, I love the pose on the tiger shot above, one I took at the National Zoo last year (appreciate that the tiger was 8,000 miles away when I took this shot if you will). I know what color this tiger was because I was there to take the photo. However, since I didn't have a sketchbook with me to record the colors, another ref would help fill in the gaps in my memory. It's a simple matter to hit the internet (google's image search is a nice function for this) to find another tiger photo with better color. I'll use my pose and the color from the other photo.

In this case, it's not really necessary to track down a copyright-free photo, since you're not using the likeness or copying the photo in any way, but if you do need to borrow majorly from a photo in anyway, there are several places to find photos that are copyright free, like the WetCanvas reference library, or with photos available under the Creative Commons License, like Flickr (notice that not all photos on Flickr are available under the Creative Commons License, you have to check that box on the advanced search page).

Sometimes, however, the task is harder because it's a commission and you've not met the subject. Say it's a flashed photo of a girl with what looks like dark brown hair. You're pretty sure that it's lighter than the photo, but you're not sure how light. This is not the time to pull out hair dye swatches and start guessing. This is where normally I would send the client an e-mail asking them to search through one of the photo sources for a girl with the same color hair. I've not yet had a client be bothered by such "homework." I find that usually, however, I can just ask the client if they have a photo that has good color and bad everything else. Usually there's a blurry photo with accurate colors that they can send.

So.

Problem: Poor color in reference photos.
Solution: Fill in the gaps with other photos of similar subjects, with color sketches (if you made them), or with photos lacking in other elements but sporting true color.


ADJUSTING BACKGROUND IN PHOTOGRAPHS & COMBINING REFERENCES (part 1)

This is a biggie. Now, you'll have to pardon my example photos here. In the great Computer Porno Fire of 2007, I lost many of my photo references, and then in the Great Hard Drive Malfunction of 2008 I lost many more (for those who may not remember either, the first was when Norton AntiVirus downloaded 3,000 porno videos onto my computer into hidden folders - thanks, Norton! and the second was when Life decided it Hated Me), so I'm kind of running short of examples here. I'll have better ones on Friday, promise.

Okay. So what do you do when you need to change backgrounds? Let's say you're doing a portrait of your charming daughter and the background is either boring or shows something really unartistic behind her, like your neighbor's dog making love to a sofa pillow or the such. The simplest way to change this is to do a studio background, just a single color, either flat or in gradient. But I hate studio portraits with a passion (my apologies to those who love them) so for me, I need all of the image to be doing something.

So let's imagine that I have consumed an ungodly amount of sweet tea and I want to do a portrait of my daughter as if she is in the middle of this lovely field near Warsaw, Virginia. I have two real options for references.

When I was first starting out, I'd use option A -- I'd digitally combine the two photos in Adobe Photoshop. This is problematic for a few reasons. While it gave me a reference instantly and beautifully combined, it didn't require me to use my artistic brain. So if I'd just thoughtlessly combined the two photos above, I would've been making a major lighting error (note the direction of lighting in each) and I would've been forced to make all my position and sizing changes dependent on how well I knew how to use the program. Any color changes I thought I'd needed I'd have to tweak individually. There are entire college degrees based around this stuff, folks.

So, as I got better and starting using my sketchbook for quick 2 minute preliminary sketches, I started using option B: sketching the various options in quick 2 minute sketches. This is the option I still use today. It's much faster for me than Photoshop, and it also sorts out a ton of problems a lot more effectively. I'm not so worried about details or likeness in these little quick sketches -- more about how values and shapes affect each other.

So enter my ugly two minute sketch. Is it great art? No. Did it work out a lot of problems in my head for this piece? Yes. Notice a couple things about it.

• Light source is identified.
• Possible color conflicts (similarity between sky and shirt color) are identified and a possible solution (intensifying saturation on shirt) is tried out
• Two different crops are tried out. If I was really doing a piece like this, I'd probably have three or four little sketches like this, the others in black and white, trying out landscape versus portrait formats, having her standing in the grass versus up close, more of her face versus more of her body, etc.
• Another advantage? A lot of times, portrait clients are very happy to get these sketches along with their portraits, if you're willing to give them up. People are fascinated by the process.
  

Now there is a compromise between a flat studio background and a fully detailed one -- it is possibly to just simplify and blur the background of photo you already have. In this case, there's a great exercise you can do to figure how to blur elements. Focus on something -- like my interesting blog post on your computer screen -- but make yourself away of the way you're perceiving things outside of your direct focus area. See how uncontrasty and blurred they are? That's what you're going for.

Problem: Crummy background.
Solution: Eliminate the background, simplify the background, or sub another photograph.

Yikes. I just realized this blog post took me a stunning two hours to assemble, which means my portrait is going to be put on hold until tomorrow.

I should take the opportunity to plug myself, shouldn't I? If you're liking this series of blog posts I've been doing lately and feel like showing your support, please head onto cafepress and buy a t-shirt or mug with my art on it, sign up for a workshop, or e-mail my editor at Flux and tell him how brilliant I am. Okay, I'm kidding about the last one.

Next post will finish up photo alterations -- remember to post questions in the comments section. Next week's series topic will be one which is very important to me!

The Nuts & Bolts of Commission Work

"All Strung Out" - 11 x 14" colored pencil on drafting film.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Prints available here.

Okay. Finally back on track! In this post I'm going to outline my commission portrait process. I want to emphasize that this is just the system that works for me -- anyone revamping their portrait process should regard this post as an all-you-can eat buffet. You can take as much or as little as you like, and if the carrots look gross, just leave them there. I won't know.

And as always, ask questions or comment on things you do differently in the comments -- I read every single one and try to reply to all of them. Now let's do this thing!

PRICING

First things first. Let's assume someone's approached me through e-mail and asked me about portraits. The first thing we're going to talk is prices. I price my portraits by size alone. I used to price based upon complexity, number of subjects, how long it took . . . and all I did was make it hard for the client to predict my pricing and make it impossible for me to remember them off the top of my head.

So instead I averaged out the time spent on my most popular size (11 x 14") and work out what I was charging for that. I turned that into a very inexact mathematical formula which I applied to the time spent on the other common sizes and then rounded them to even numbers. They're logical for clients, easy for me to remember, and fair.

PAYMENT

I used to do portraits without getting the money first. Gasp, right? I don't know what I was thinking -- but it didn't take me long to get burned. For awhile I reacted by asking for 100% upfront, which people did without question, but I found that I worked more slowly when I already had the money in hand. (See the painful truths I reveal for you guys? Do you see them?) So I settled on 50% down and 50% on completion. That gives me security and incentive to finish in a timely manner. And it also gives the client some confidence, I think, because they don't have to pay all of it until they actually see a .jpg of the final piece. Giving money to a perfect stranger can be scary. Remember that you're that perfect stranger in most cases.

REFERENCES

This is a crucial step of the process. If I don't have good references, I'm not going to get a good portrait. Period. If the client is in my state, I'll go take my own. In this case, I only as for my travel expenses and I give the client a CD with the images on it with the final portrait. This is definitely an extra and don't feel like you have to do this to be a good portrait artist.

If they aren't in state -- and this happens often as I get a lot of commissions from online sources -- then I'm going to have to make do with their photos. Also, dead people and animals don't pose very well (at least for me), so any post mortem portraits will have to be done from client photographs.

This is a scary moment, waiting for the photos to appear. Will they be awful? Beautiful? I have only turned down one commission based upon terrible photos (the cat had gone to that big litter box in the sky and wasn't available for further photographic torment) -- and in the end, we actually worked out a compromise on that one, which I talk about later.

I tell my clients to send me as many photos as they think they need me to see. I need to establish:

• actual colors (flash will obliterate proper coloration; however, even a blurry photo can establish colors)
• pose (though I can also play with these with my sketchbook)
• likeness (a nice crisp photo, please)
• personality (this is not the same as the above item)

My record is a client who sent over 30 photos for her cat portrait. I didn't mind -- I'd much rather have too many than too few. I also ask for a description of the subject, if I can't meet them. I want to work as much life into this portrait as possible.

I usually get digital photos but make sure if you get snail mail photos to ask if they want them returned.

WHEN REFERENCES GO BAD

Sometimes, the client will only have terrible references available. Blurry or flashed or just plain too small. You have two choices then. 1) turn down the commission (I'm loathe to turn down a possible electric bill payment, myself), or 2) fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

This is where communication is essential. If you don't tell the client the references are unworkable, they'll just assume they're fine and be horrified at the portrait of mush that you deliver. If I get unusable references, I go back to the client and tell them right away. If the subject's still breathing, I coach them on taking photos that will give me what I need.

If the subject isn't still walking among us (I'm determined to see how many different ways I can say "dead" in one post), more drastic measures need to be taken. No, I'm not digging up any graves. But I do give the client homework in that case. I tell them about google images and Flickr and I ask them to find photos that fill in the blanks (you can tell at this point that I'm talking about animal portraits, not people). For instance, one client had no photographs that showed her moribund cat's actual eye color. Rather than just guessing at what shade blue she meant, I had her find a photo of a cat with a similar eye color.

Sometimes I do the leg work myself. For instance, if the photo has poor lighting, I'll go in search of a photo with better lighting. Or if I'm combining elements in a portrait (I get asked to do this a lot -- more in the next section), I'll often need to find images to help me out with lighting and shadows or shapes.

STYLE & COMBINING ELEMENTS

Often clients will ask if I can change things from the photo. The answer for me is a resounding yes. In fact, if it was a no, I'd wonder what the point was of doing the portrait in the first place. But I do have my limits. If the request is something like putting a dog on their favorite chair or having a woman snuggling her child where no snuggling had occurred, I'm very happy to do it.

But sometimes I have to say no. A man once asked me to do his portrait. He wanted to be standing on a pedestal while three former presidents stood at the base in baseball uniforms and regarded him. I said no. (this is an absolutely true story, by the way).

Other things I won't change? My style. If someone is asking you for a portrait, it should be because they love your existing body of work. The goal is to create a piece that will fit seamlessly into my current pieces. I'll ask for color input if there's going to be a large field of color in the portrait, but otherwise, my style is the default setting and is unlikely to change.

REQUESTED CHANGES OF THE PORTRAIT ITSELF

These used to terrify me. I never wanted to show the portrait to the client because what if they didn't like it? I've worked out a system now, however, where I do a few two-minute thumbnail sketches and send them to the client to approve. This has eliminated 90% of the change requests, because the pose is already worked out.

Then I give my clients the option of seeing the portrait in progress or being surprised at the end. The vast majority prefer to be surprised. The others get to see the portrait twice. Once early on, when I can still make pretty major changes (colored pencil is picky this way). And then at the end, when it's all done and only minor changes can be made. A few times I've had to adjust an eye or a smile at the first stage, but really, I don't angst over this anymore. If you've done your sketches, the major things, the pose issues, are all taken care of.

I used to let my clients push me around, back when I was a tadpole. Before I said very firmly how much I could change and how much I couldn't, I was asked to do all sorts of nit-picky alterations -- colors on sofa cushions and positioning of highlights and random things. And I finally realized that this was entirely my fault. Not the client's. I wasn't emanating self-confidence in my own ability, and I was basically asking the client to second guess me. Now, I'm open to suggestions, but when it comes down to it, I'm the artist. They're just going to have to trust me.

And it works.

DELIVERY

First, I show the client a .jpg of the image, unless they want to be surprised. If they approve (I should say when), I send them an invoice for the balance, and I wait until I've received payment to ship.

No exceptions.

Then it's time for the package to go whirling through the postal system. Two words for you:

1) sturdy cardboard
2) insurance

I don't do anything fancy to package the art. I don't frame or mat my pieces -- the client will make all those decisions anyway, and I don't sell frames. I sandwich the art between sturdy cardboard and either bubble wrap it or otherwise cushion it against the post office playing kick ball with the box. I tape a business card to the packaging and jot a little note on the back of it.

Yo! Tis Maggie thanks for buying thanx bye.

Well, slightly better than that.

Then I send it priority (always priority) with insurance and follow up to make sure they've gotten it.

Thus a commission portrait is born.

Rats, I really wanted to work in a dead reference one more time. I had a good one: "living impaired." See, that would've been funny, right?